Happy Tuesday! Each week on the blog I get to share some of what I have seen, read, and found interesting and thought provoking over the past week. To help make sense of all of these links, I have grouped them by the following categories: Church and Ministry Thought & Practice; Cross-Sector Collaboration; Leadership Thought & Practice; Millennials; Neighbor Love; Social Media & Blogging; Stewardship; Vocation; and Miscellaneous. I hope that you enjoy these links!

Church and Ministry Thought & Practice

For those of you preparing for worship this week, I have some links for you. First of all, if you are following the revised common lectionary Bishop Michael Rinehart shares some thoughts on “Epiphany 2C,” and the gospel story from John 2 about Jesus turning water into wine. Friend and professor Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis also dug into that gospel story in writing about “Embodied Epiphanies.”

“Walk with Beauty” by Vonda Drees (reminding me of the mountains that I can see from Messiah Lutheran’s North Campus)

I shared a new post from my role as Mission Developer at Messiah Lutheran Church in reflecting about “Baptism, Promise, and Change.” I am also excited to share that the new website for the North Campus of Messiah, which is where my role as mission developer is centered is now live. It’s a work in progress like all websites, but I’m particularly excited about the video on the front of the webpage.

In looking at 2016 and ahead toward this year in the church Carey Nieuwhof unpacked, “5 Disruptive Church Trends That Will Rule 2016.” The trends that Carey outlined are: Church online will become an advance, not just a supplement to or replacement for church; preachers will preach less often; experience will trump content; passion will beat polish; only the most engaged and the curious will attend. What do you think of these? What trends do you see?

Blogger and pastor Clint Schnekloth added his own “5 Disruptive Church Trends that will rule 2016.” His list includes: the church will align with the new civil rights movement #blacklivesmatter; church will be increasingly trans-mediated; communities of faith will transcend bipartisan politics, and also enrich them by remembering Jesus; real, deep creativity will emerge as an alternative to derivative mimicry; and the church will become a refuge, and walk with refugees. Let it be so.

Last week one of my absolute favorite baseball players of all time, Ken Griffey Jr., was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In light of that, C. Trent Rosencrans shared a very touching story about Griffey and neighbor love in action in writing about, “A different kind of Ken Griffey Jr. story.”

Rick Seaney shared some helpful thoughts if you are planning air travel this year by sharing what likely will be “The Worst Days to Fly in 2016.”

If you watched any of the football playoffs this weekend, you likely saw what was the full agony of defeat (Vikings) and the thrill of victory, in the most miraculous of ways perhaps (Seahawks). Here’s both radio calls for the thrilling/agonizing finish, depending on who you were rooting for. As for me, well, I was quite thrilled with the result as a Seahawks fan, but I do feel for my Viking fan friends.

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That concludes this edition of the links. I hope you have enjoyed them. As always, if you have particular questions or topics for me to think about on the blog, please share them. Also, if there are things you would like to see included in the links, please let me know that too. Thank you for reading and being a part of the conversation! Blessings on your week-TS